Word: sterne
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...DISPUTE surrounding Baby M involved profound issues of law, psychology and theology. Whitehead thought she had a product to sell, in this case an unfertilized human egg, and a service to offer, that of a mobile human incubator. Stern wanted what Whitehead could provide and agreed to a price. What went unaccounted for in the deal was Whitehead's joy at the baby's first kick, whatever sense of expectation surges together with a bout of morning sickness and the satisfaction of a mother holding her child in a delivery room...
...agreement Stern and Whitehead struck required her to experience such feelings--for a fee. But there are limits to what men and women can know about their own bodies or their own psyches, and they remain even when technology makes it possible for one woman to bear a child for another. No one can predict what feelings a particular pregnancy might inspire well enough to put a price on them...
Furthermore, the emotions Stern and Whitehead tried to barter were not really their own. Like love, hate or appreciation of beauty, motherhood is something an individual can experience but not package for sale. The experiences of pregnancy, though personal, are too fundamentally human to be mere private property. What Whitehead felt during the nine months she carried Melissa, whom she calls Sara, were emotions that are part of her humanity. What is not owned cannot be sold...
...judge wrote that Whitehead was "manipulative, impulsive and exploitive...a woman without empathy." Stern and his physician wife, he reasoned, would make better parents; they could surely provide more advantages for the baby than Whitehead, a high school drop-out, and her garbage collector husband. The Sterns, he noted, might one day give Melissa music lessons...
Sorkow thought it less worthy of note that the Sterns misrepresented themselves to Whitehead. The couple appealed to Whitehead's sympathy by telling her they were unable to have or adopt a child. The contract Whitehead signed stated that Elizabeth Stern was infertile...